I call him "Doesn't like AI"
Via RT:

As Arkady Volozh, the head of Yandex, pitched him on the technology’s potential, the Russian president inquired about when AI ‘will eat us’.

The question seemed to baffle the head of Russia’s biggest tech firm, who was giving Putin a tour on the company’s Moscow HQ on Thursday.

“I hope never”, he replied after taking a pause to gather his thoughts. “It’s not the first machine to be better than humans at something. An excavator digs better than we do with a shovel. But we don’t get eaten by excavators. A car moves faster than we do…”

But Putin seemed unconvinced. “They don't think."

Yup. He gets it.

As I noted yesterday, the Russian cybernetic tradition is defensive, while the Five Eyes tradition is aggressive. Putin is carrying on the Russian defensive mode. Yandex is not.

All sides COULD defend their humans against rogue machines. We've been doing it for a long time with moderately intelligent machines like Jacquard looms and CNC lathes. Physical interlocks, fail-safe shutdown mechanisms. Now we've explicitly abandoned our defense with the new "law" authorizing full-force weaponizing of automobiles against pedestrians. Consistent. Our vile infinitely evil omnicidal dysgovernment has been full-force weaponizing EVERYTHING against Deplorables since 1989, while explicitly removing EVERY POSSIBLE FORM OF SELF-DEFENSE.

The only puzzle is why Musk claims to be against AI, when he's one of the main producers and promoters of AI.

Not really a puzzle. He's pulling a classic con game, which works when you Own The CONversation.

In an earlier pre-Tribal era, GM owned the CONversation about cars. GM pulled the same trick twice that I can think of, probably a lot more that weren't known.

(1) In the late 50s the Big Three were engaged in a stupid horsepower race, pulled by literal racing on the stock-car tracks. Each maker had its own captive racing teams, and each produced "heavy duty" engines and suspensions that were sold only to pro racers. The publicity was valuable. GM was tired of being upstaged by Deplorable Chrysler (who had actually started the race) so GM declared that it was done with the horsepower race and got the Manufacturer's Association to ban the "heavy duty" stuff and company teams. Chrysler and Ford went along because they were Owned by the CONversation. As soon as the others pulled out, GM jumped back in.

(2) In '61 the heads of GM and Chrysler happened to be together at some big Detroit social swaree, which was common at the time. GM's head made some casual remarks indicating that GM was about to downsize its big cars, which Chrysler's head "overheard" according to plan. Chrysler's head immediately ordered next year's big cars to be downsized. GM, of course, had no such intentions. GM continued upsizing while Chrysler idiotically downsized. (Chrysler SHOULD have known better, since they'd made the same exact mistake TWICE before, in '33 and '53.)

In today's Tribal era Musk automatically owns the CONversation about cars and machines in general, because Musk is the first Tribal to run a real auto company. So when Musk claims that he doesn't like AI, he's just preparing the ground for total Musk ownership of AI.

Labels: defensible spaces

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